


(when pushing comes to shove) there ain't no cure for love

by janie_tangerine



Category: Bastille Day (2016)
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Fluff, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Idiots in Love, M/M, Post-Canon, The Author Regrets Nothing, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt, briar is also So Whipped it's not funny, briar is shit at Feelings TM, gratuitous use of britney spears lyrics for ship purposes, what has this movie done to me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-09 22:42:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7820080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>where Briar realizes he has Feelings with the capital F for Michael. That wasn't in the plans, damn it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(when pushing comes to shove) there ain't no cure for love

**Author's Note:**

> An anon on tumblr asks for _you want fic suggestion, how about Briar realizing that he has feelings for Michael and tries ( really hard) to deal with it_. As I am 100% trash for these two by this point, I'm happily complying. I don't even know. Briar doesn't either at this point. Nothing belongs to me as usual and the title is from a Bon Jovi song, and really it's just what it says on the tin.

Thing is: he realizes it in a frankly fucking embarrassing way, and Sean Briar does _not_  do embarrassing as a general life rule.

It’s not about the fact that he’s just realized he _likes_  fucking Mason. And not in the _I’m attracted to the guy on a purely physical level_  way, which - listen, it’d have been way more manageable. Because that’s  _objective_ , all right? And for all the ways the kid might grate on his nerves, you can’t say that he’s not a sight for sore eyes. That was clear from moment number one.

Damn it, if he had just wanted to screw the guy he would be handling this a lot better. _Really_. He’s been doing this job for years, he knows what it means to keep that kind of thing under control.

Point is, he _doesn’t_  just want to screw the guy. 

And he should have never realized it like _this_.

It wasn’t - it’s ridiculous. It’s _dumb_. It’s _absolutely not dignified_.

They’re at the headquarters’ mess hall. They just finished debriefing. It’s the _fifth_  mission they sent him on with - he just wishes they’d say straight whether they think Mason can go for training officially or if he’s really better suited for washing cars, never mind that Sean thinks that he’d be wasted washing cars. They’re eating some honestly crap food. Mason’s just muttered something about going to a cafe next time, they’re in _Paris_  and there’s no reason they should be subjected to horrid American mess food. Sean would have been inclined to agree.

Anyway, the radio is on, and Sean has no fucking clue of why someone would put on a station that airs darned _Britney Spears_  in a CIA building, but just as Mason shoves some food into his mouth - so he had it half-open, and no one should be allowed to look  _this_  attractive while chewing, fuck’s sake - some dumb Britney song starts. Sean notices Mason’s eyes narrowing at once, and then he swallows the darned food and _smirks_  slightly, and -

And he starts humming it under his breath as he takes another forkful.

Right. After all, it was on his file that the first things the guy stole were Britney records, which should say everything about how _terrible_  his music tastes had to be, but that’s not the point.

The point is that Sean is looking at the guy chewing on his food while humming the damned thing under his breath ( _I’m stronger than yesterday, now it’s nothing but my way, my loneliness ain’t killing me no more_ , seriously? what the hell did kids listen to in the late nineties?) and at once his chest suddenly swells with - _something_  that he’d call fondness if he was kidding himself.

Sean doesn’t like to kid himself though - it usually doesn’t get the job done.

That’s why he’s finding himself staring at his former-arrest-turned-sort-of-partner-who-he-has-been-trying-to-not-call-by-name-for-a-month-so-he-might-not-risk-getting-attached at midnight in a badly lit mess hall while he eats without much finesse and hums fucking Britney Spears songs and thinks, _fuck but I actually like him_.

He almost chokes on his damned food when the realization comes.

“Hey,” Mason - _Michael_  - says, momentarily putting down his fork, “is Britney so terrible to your poor ears that you can’t even perform a simple task like, you know, eating after three days?”

“Fuck you,” Sean replies, and shoves his sandwich in his mouth before his expression can betray him.

That was _not_  the right reply to it.

–

Fuck that.

Sean’s always made sure to _never_  form attachments on the workplace beyond being friendly with people. It’s just not a good idea. Heck, he still hasn’t quite gotten over not having realized things sooner when it came to Karen, and that was the only relationship he had in the agency that could have somehow been described as a friendship of sorts.

He’d done _so well_  up until now.

Right.

Until he got partnered up with _him_. He doesn’t - he _shouldn’t_  even go there. Mason is just - bad news in that sense. It’s not just that he’s an asshole who used to _steal things for a living_  and who can’t quit stealing his wallet for fun when Sean’s not looking - _fine_ , that’s actually an asset on field, but still. Fine, he’s an _attractive_  asshole, and not the bad kind of, but that doesn’t change the basics. It’s also that he’s _way_  too young for that matter, and someone who at the ripe age of barely twenty-five has a psychological evaluation that thick is  _not_  good news when taking _Briar’_ s psychological evaluation into account.

(Fine, _fine_ , it hasn’t prevented them from being an effective team, but that’s not the point.)

Also, Briar’s his _handler_  up until things change.

It’s just _not_  a good idea.

He should try to forget it.

Except that they see each other every day and work with each other most of the time and in comparison to last July - fuck this noise, it’s  _obvious_  that Michael - _Mason_  - _does_  benefit from having a job with a purpose. You’d have thought different, but he’s definitely less of an emotional mess in comparison to when they met, he _really_  needs to stop trying to crack dumb jokes all the time because his eyes light up when he smiles and it’s honestly really fucking illegal, whenever there’s time he always shows up handing him a cup of coffee the way Sean likes it - Sean has no clue of when he found out but he did somehow -, he looks honestly pleased whenever he convinces Sean to go grab something at a proper bar that _he_  would know, having lived here for this long, and that’s just - not _fair_ , because you can’t really say no to that damned face.

The problem is that no one should look _that_  happy when someone else accepts to go have coffee with them (or a drink, if it’s late), especially when that someone is _him_  since he’s generally crappy company in these circumstances. And Mich - _Mason_  always does, and - 

And shit but Sean doesn’t like to lie to himself. He hopes HQ just clears Mason for official training at this point.

And if it means that _then_  they’d get sent on serious missions and there’d be the serious risk of seeing the kid die in front of him, he doesn’t think about it.

Shit, he shouldn’t have gotten attached.

Except that - that he _is_ , damn it.

–

He comes _this_  close to ask for a transfer the moment they clear Michael for official training. He almost does fill the form - figuring that if he goes for it now it might not be too late and that he’d get over it.

But then Michael asks him if he wants a celebratory drink in one of his cafes. Sean figures he can say yes - if he leaves soon then what’s the harm in it?

And then -

 _Then_  -

“You know,” Michael says, drinking his wine - Sean went for a beer himself -, “I couldn’t believe they said yes, you know?”

“I couldn’t either,” he replies dryly before taking a sip.

“Oh, fuck off,” Michael laughs. Damn, it’s not - _legal_ , how nice his smile is. “I mean, I was sure they’d just say something like, you have potential but nah, not good enough. Same as more or less everyone else.”

 _Shit_ , he has to be somewhat drunk if he’s saying that so liberally.

“Seems like they didn’t,” Sean says cautiously.

“No. And - it’s just - I didn’t know it’d feel this good. I mean. If they said yes I guess they _do_  want me there, and it’s just - not what usually happens.”

 _This_ is when Briar realizes that if he fills that form and leaves for some op in the middle of nowhere he’ll be just the last name on the list of people who left the kid with endless trust issues, an abandonment complex the size of the Empire State Building and  _that_  thick of a psychological evaluation at the ripe age of twenty-five.

More than that, he realizes that he doesn’t want to be that person more than he actually fears how badly this might turn out to end later.

He swallows his beer.

“Well, they don’t hire slackers,” Sean merely says, and Michael sends him a smile which is actually one hundred per cent pleased  _and_  sincere and damn it, _damn it_ , his chest is going tight all over again -

And Sean Briar is utterly, completely fucked, he figures, because there’s no way this is going to go away soon.

–

It doesn’t, in fact, go away.

–

Also, turns out that Michael is, in fact, _good_  at it when he finally starts undergoing official training, which is nothing Sean hadn’t suspected.

That said, the week in which Sean has to teach him how to actually aim a darned gun is pure hell - spending it with Michael’s back pressing against him and his hands on Michael’s because the kid had issues with actually shooting _straight_  turns it into seven days of complete frustration, sexual _and_  also not, and he hopes he doesn’t have to ever do it again lest he gives himself out.

Which is absolutely _not_  what’s going to happen.

–

Admittedly, he manages to - he supposes - keeping things under control for a long time.

That’s it, until on a January 14th in which they have nothing scheduled he gets a text from Michael saying they should meet under his building.

(He still lives in that attic. Sean still doesn’t understand why anyone would.)

Sean goes. Michael is there wearing a dark blue coat that he should  _not_  be allowed to put on, given that it just compliments his eyes, and -

Shit. Sometimes Briar wishes he never, never put a name to his fucking _feelings_.

“So what’s the occasion?”

MIchael looks at him in a fairly unimpressed way. “Do you _know_  what day it is?”

“… January 14th?”

“Right.”

“ _And_ , should that mean something?”

Michael openly rolls his eyes and Sean would like to know what the hell he’s up to.

“It _should_. Since we went on a roof chase starting from this very building _six months ago_.”

Wait, _what_  - it’s been six months already? And - more than that -

“Are we meeting for lunch because it’s been six months?”

Michael smirks and moves closer. “Maybe we are.”

“What the hell?”

“I figured that’d be your reaction, but it’s not just that.”

“Not just that.”

Michael shakes his head and then opens the main door of the building again, dragging Sean inside and closing it again. _What is going on_ , he’d like to know.

“See,” Michael says, licking his lips for a split moment. Christ, if Briar’s finding _that_  hot, too, he really needs another psych evaluation. “I noticed a thing. I think.”

“A thing.”

“With _you_ , yes. And I think I’m maybe right about it. I _hope_  I’m right about it.”

“And that’d be?”

The way the kid’s smirking right now should be more illegal than that damned coat, Sean thinks as Michael’s hands go to the lapels of his own winter coat and he pulls slightly downwards.

“Michael -”

“I think,” Michael says, “that you’ve been thinking about _this_  for a while, haven’t you?”

And then he moves forward and _presses his mouth against Sean’s_  and damn it he should push him away and cut it off now, and instead he makes a motion as if to kiss back -

And that’s when the bastard _actually fucking leans back_.

“I knew that,” he says, and now he looks _happy_  about it?

“What -”

“Sorry, that was a dick move, but I needed to know the genuine reaction. Well, just so you know, if you want to go ahead and do it again, I won’t say no.”

“You _wouldn’t_.”

“Would I be asking you out for lunch _six months after you chase me on a fucking rooftop_  and kiss you if I wasn’t, you know, _into you_? Because if you think that it’s the case, you aren’t half as smart as you think you are.”

“You - seriously? Fuck you very much.”

“I’m entirely willing, if you bother asking.”

Now he’s almost _laughing_? Briar kind of wants to punch the bastard -

No, who is he kidding, he wants to actually kiss him again.

And there’s a limit to how much someone can stand in his position, and so he puts a hand behind Michael’s neck and he drags him forward and he does and he didn’t know what to expect but not a sigh of relief the moment their lips meet.

Certainly not for Michael to answer _very_  enthusiastically as Sean presses him up against the wall.

Certainly not for Michael to moan openly into his mouth the moment Sean’s hands go to his wrists and he pins him up against the wall because he needed better access and it seemed the best idea at the time.

“Well,” he says when he has to move away, breathing hard, “I might bother asking, but - you _are_  aware that we aren’t in the best field when it comes to this kinda thing happening _on the job_?”

“Do I look like someone who gives a fuck about protocol?”

Fine, he doesn’t.

“No, fine. If you’re sure -”

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask for _months_ ,” Michael interrupts him, “if that’s what’s going to make you stop stalling. Because we could get lunch. Or we could go upstairs. Or we could get lunch after going upstairs, though I guess it’d be dinner at that point.” And he sounds _smug_  now, which shouldn’t be a thing when Sean’s still pinning him up against the wall -

And he’d really like to go upstairs, but now he’s noticing that the bastard _dressed up_  because it was - fucking _six months_ since their roof chase, and somehow it’s so endearing that he can’t bring himself to say no to the darned lunch.

“We can have lunch. Then we can go upstairs.”

“Oh, good. I know a nice place. If you let me go,” Michael answers, still smirking, but Sean doesn’t think he’s ever seen the kid look  _this_  happy in the entire time they knew each other.

He lets him go. Ponders for a moment if he could do that again upstairs.

Right, maybe he should consider that later.

“Don’t worry,” Michael says as they get out of the building again, “if you wanna do that again upstairs, I’m _definitely_  game.”

Then he winks and turns his back on Sean, heading for the other side of the street.

Not for the first time in months, Sean thinks that Michael Mason is going to be the death of him.

Except that right now, he thinks as he follows and tries to not think about _good_  that kiss was, it looks like a pretty sweet deal.

 

End.


End file.
